SOURCE: Bode, Rita. “‘They … Should Be Out of It’: The Women of Heart of Darkness.” Conradiana: A Journal of Joseph Conrad Studies 26, no. 1 (1994): 20-34.

In the following essay, Bode asserts that “a close focus on the females in Heart of Darkness suggests that the extent and nature of their power are formidable.”

Conrad's women in Heart of Darkness have bewildered critical commentators as much, perhaps, as his Congo experience bedevils Marlow. Though Conrad's text seems to proffer an invitation to read the work as a kind of male ritual, a moral and sexual initiation into “manhood,” the wide range of critical approaches has not neglected the work's female figures. Recent feminist studies have focused on the women characters to explore Conrad's methods and ideology. Valerie M. Sedlak, for instance, looks...